Elite unis want students to pay more

The Group of Eight, representing ­Australia’s elite, research-intensive universities, has strongly backed the federal government’s audit ­commission push to deregulate ­university fees. It says there should be “greater flexibility in the setting of ­student contributions."

“The Group of Eight encourages the government to adopt such deregulation and to move to reform the system as quickly as is prudent and without undue delay," the group’s chair,
Ian Young
, said on Saturday.

However, although it implicitly endorsed students paying more of the cost of university education, the group did not say what proportion of the cost should fall on students.

In its report released last Thursday the Audit Commission recommended the student contribution should, on average, rise from 41 per cent to 55 per cent of the cost of university education.

“Such deregulation, when combined with enhanced scholarship provision and the HELP income contingent loan system [commonly known as HECS], will enable Australian universities to compete in the increasingly ­competitive international education environment," said Professor Young, who is also vice chancellor of the ­Australian National University (ANU).

However the Group of Eight which is representing the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, NSW, ­Queensland, Western Australia, Monash University and the ANU – rejected the commission’s proposal to toughen HECS repayment rules.

Reduced threshold

The commission recommended reducing the annual income threshold at which graduates begin repayment from the current $51,309 to the ­minimum wage level of $32,354, and raising the interest rate on HECS loans from the current level equal to the CPI (meaning zero real interest rate) to a level which recovered the federal ­government’s costs (that is the ­government borrowing rate plus the cost of bad debts and administration of the HECS scheme).

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The Group of Eight believes raising the cost of HECS to students would restrict participation in higher ­education and be incompatible with a deregulated system.

Other universities outside the Group of Eight increasingly back the ­deregulation of university fees but insist there must be safeguards to protect ­disadvantaged students.

For example, while La Trobe ­University vice chancellor
John Dewar
was one of the first non Group of Eight ­university chiefs to support fee ­deregulation, his backing is conditional on ­universities being able to keep extra money from any fee rises and using some of the additional revenue for a comprehensive scholarship scheme.

Professor Dewar also said there needed to be a mechanism to address market failure. For example, there needed to be a way to prevent fees for nursing and education courses being so high that students would not choose these professions.

The six-strong Regional Universities Network, said it was ready to discuss fee deregulation with the government but wanted to put other issues on the table as well, including research funding and regional loadings, which would amount to extra money for universities in regional areas.

It said it was important to increase the number of regional students at ­university, particularly those from low socio-economic status families.